1936
TO BEDE GRIFFITHS: On unreliable fashions in philosophy and the reliability of the Word; on how it is easier to pray for others than for oneself; on obedience as the whole business of life; and on the obedience of nature as the beauty of nature.
8 JANUARY 1936
It must be nice to know some Aristotle, and it is a relief to hear that kind of philosophy praised by you who have a right to judge: for in the Oxford world ‘ Neo-Scholasticism’ has become such a fashion among ignorant undergrads. that I am sick of the sound of it….
By the way, I hope that the great religious revival now going on will not get itself too mixed up with Scholasticism, for I am sure that the revival of the latter, however salutary, must be as temporary as any other movement in philosophy. Of things on the natural level, now one, now another, is the ally or the enemy of Faith. The scientists have got us in such a muddle that at present rationalism is on our side, and enthusiasm is an enemy: the opposite was true in the 19th century and will be true again. I mean, we have no abiding city even in philosophy: all passes, except the Word….
Thank you for your prayers: you know mine too, little worth as they are. Have you found, or is it peculiar to me, that it is much easier to pray for others than for oneself. Doubtless because every return to one’s own situation involves action: or to speak more plainly, obedience. That appears to me more and more the whole business of life, the only road to love and peace—the cross and the crown in one. Did you ever notice a beautiful touch in the Faerie Queene
‘a groom them laid at rest in easie bedd,
His name was meek Obedience.’
What indeed can we imagine Heaven to be but unimpeded obedience. I think this is one of the causes of our love of inanimate nature, that in it we see things which unswervingly carry out the will of their Creator, and are therefore wholly beautiful: and though their kind of obedience is infinitely lower than ours, yet the degree is so much more perfect that a Christian can see the reason that the Romantics had in feeling a certain holiness in the wood and water. The Pantheistic conclusions they sometimes drew are false: but their feeling was just and we can safely allow it in ourselves now that we know the real reason.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES, whose dog Tommy had just died, leaving his other dog John bereft of companionship: On the comfort of pets (Mr. Papworth was Lewis’s dog); on the significance of Charles Williams’s novel; and on humility as a corrective of the sin of abuse of the intellect.
26 FEBRUARY 1936
I see to my consternation that it is over a month since your letter came. It certainly deserved an earlier answer but you must forgive me.
I was very sorry indeed to hear about ‘Tommy’. I am particularly sorry for John. You know I crossed with the pair of them last time I left home: and I should like to say as impressively as I can—and you to take note—that I was very much impressed by seeing them together and by the fire, almost the spiritual atmosphere of their whole world of mountain climbing. It gave me a new and most favourable sidelight on John: and I am afraid it is most unlikely that he will find any one to take Tommy’s place. I am very sorry for him. Try to be as nice to him as you can—but I have no doubt you are doing that already.
For yourself I expect days are pretty dim at present. Do you hear good news of the boy? As I said before, I am sure you have done the right thing, and I’m afraid that is all the comfort I can offer.
I quite understand what you say about the comfort derived from all a dog’s ‘little affairs’, and enjoyed reading that passage as much as any in your letter. They are a busy folk. And talking of dogs, poor old Mr Papworth has been gathered to his fathers. He had been ailing for some time and finally got a bad ulcer on his chin. He was given a strong sleeping draught. When I went to bed he was asleep in his basket and breathing as gently as a child: in the morning he was dead. Minto has been very badly upset—almost as if for a human being. I don’t feel it as badly as that myself and would discourage the feeling (I think) if I had it. But it is a parting, and one sometimes remembers his old happy days, especially his puppyhood, with an ache.
I have just read what I think a really great book, The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams. It is based on the Platonic theory of the other world in which the archetypes of all earthly qualities exist: and in the novel, owing to a bit of machinery which doesn’t matter, these archetypes start sucking our world back. The lion of strength appears in the world and the strength starts going out of houses and things into him. The archetypal butterfly (enormous) appears and all the butterflies of the world fly back into him. But man contains and ought to be able to rule all these forces: and there is one man in the book who does, and the story ends with him as a second Adam ‘naming the beasts’ and establishing dominion over them.
It is not only a most exciting fantasy, but a deeply religious and (unobtrusively) a profoundly learned book. The reading of it has been a good preparation for Lent as far as I am concerned: for it shows me (through the heroine) the special sin of abuse of intellect to which all my profession are liable, more clearly than I ever saw it before. I have learned more than I ever knew yet about humility. In fact it has been a big experience. Do get it, and don’t mind if you don’t understand everything the first time. It deserves reading over and over again. It isn’t often now-a-days you get a Christian fantasy.
TO CHARLES WILLIAMS: On the impact on Lewis of Williams’s novel. This is the letter that begins their friendship. Damaris Tighe is the heroine of the novel, the young philosopher who undergoes a conversion.
11 MARCH 1936
I never know about writing to an author. If you are older than I, I don’t want to seem impertinent: if you are younger, I don’t want to seem patronizing. But I feel I must risk it.
A book sometimes crosses one’s path which is so like the sound of one’s native language in a strange country that it feels almost uncivil not to wave some kind of flag in answer. I have just read your Place of the Lion and it is to me one of the major literary events of my life—comparable to my first discovery of George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, or Wm. Morris. There are layers and layers—first the pleasure that any good fantasy gives me: then, what is rarely (though not so very rarely) combined with this, the pleasure of a real philosophical and theological stimulus: thirdly, characters: fourthly, what I neither expected nor desired, substantial edification.
I mean the latter with perfect seriousness. I know Damaris very well: in fact I was in course of becoming Damaris (but you have pulled me up)…. Not only is your diagnosis good: but the very way in which you force one to look at the matter is itself the beginning of a cure. Honestly, I didn’t think there was anyone now alive in England who could do it.
Coghill of Exeter put me on to the book: I have put on Tolkien (the Professor of Anglo Saxon and a papist) and my brother. So there are three dons and one soldier all buzzing with excited admiration. We have a sort of informal club called the Inklings: the qualifications (as they have informally evolved) are a tendency to write, and Christianity. Can you come down some day next term (preferably not Sat. or Sunday), spend the night as my guest in College, eat with us at a chop house, and talk with us till the small hours. Meantime, a thousand thanks.